What to plant in a raised garden bed

Easy, high-value crops for a first bed

• Salad greens and spinach: cut a few leaves at a time and they keep regrowing.
• Bush beans and snap peas: quick, productive and good for the soil.
• Cherry tomatoes: staked or caged, they produce for months.
• Peppers and eggplant: they love the extra warmth of a raised bed.
• Herbs such as basil, parsley, chives and cilantro.
• Carrots and beets: they grow straight and smooth in loose, stone-free mix.

Crops that sprawl widely, such as pumpkins and winter squash, can take over a small bed. Grow them at the edge and let the vines spill out onto the path, or save them for a larger plot.

Plant closer than you would in rows

Because you never walk on the soil, you can plant in blocks instead of rows with paths between them. Square-foot spacing is a simple way to plan it: divide the bed into one-foot squares and plant one tomato, four lettuces, nine bush beans or sixteen carrots per square. Dense planting shades the soil, which cuts weeds and holds moisture.

Keep the bed producing all season

Succession planting keeps something ready to pick instead of one big harvest followed by an empty bed. Sow a short row of greens or radishes every two weeks in spring. As cool-season crops finish in early summer, follow them with beans, cucumbers or squash. In late summer, sow another round of greens and set out garlic in fall for next year.

Lay the bed out by height

In the Northern Hemisphere, put trellised peas, pole beans and tall tomatoes along the north edge so they do not shade shorter plants as the sun moves across the sky. In the Southern Hemisphere, use the south edge. Shorter crops like lettuce and herbs go in front, where they get full sun and are easy to reach.

Companion planting worth trying

Some pairings are well worth the space. Basil tucked between tomatoes makes good use of the gaps. Marigolds and nasturtiums along the edges attract beneficial insects. Fast radishes sown with slow carrots mark the row and are harvested before the carrots need the room. Treat companion planting as a way to fill space usefully rather than as pest control you can count on.

Watering a planted bed

Raised beds drain quickly, which is good for roots but means checking moisture more often in hot weather. Water deeply at the base of plants in the morning, so the top few inches stay moist without leaving leaves wet overnight. A soaker hose or drip line laid along the bed makes this almost effortless.

A sample first-season plan for a four by eight bed

Dividing a four by eight bed into thirty-two one-foot squares makes planning concrete. One workable spring-to-summer plan:

• North edge, eight squares: two tomatoes on stakes or cages, with snap peas on a trellis in early spring before the tomatoes need the room.
• Middle rows, sixteen squares: two peppers, four squares of bush beans, four of carrots, two of beets, two of lettuce and two of spinach.
• Front edge, eight squares: basil, parsley, chives, cilantro and a few marigolds and nasturtiums.

As the lettuce, spinach and peas finish, replant those squares with a second sowing of beans or a fall crop of greens.

Timing by season

Cool-season crops such as lettuce, spinach, peas, radishes, carrots and the cabbage family can go in a few weeks before your last spring frost and again in late summer for a fall harvest. Warm-season crops such as tomatoes, peppers, beans, cucumbers, squash and basil should wait until after the last frost, when the soil has warmed. Your local extension service or a frost date calculator gives typical frost dates for your area.

Because raised beds warm up early, they are a good place to push the season a little, especially with a simple row cover or cold frame on top.

Crops to think twice about

A few plants are better kept out of a small bed. Mint and other spreading herbs take over quickly and are easier to manage in their own pot. Corn needs to be planted in a block of many plants to pollinate well, which uses up most of a small bed for one crop. Asparagus and rhubarb are perennials that stay in place for years, so give them a bed of their own rather than mixing them in with annual vegetables.